


Dirge

by Fweeble



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dragon Age AU, Ensemble Cast, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-27
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-17 11:14:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4664502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fweeble/pseuds/Fweeble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His earliest memory is of her singing.<br/><br/>They were foreign words, strange and haunting. His lullabies were the funeral dirges of her people, the last of their kind. <em>Da’len</em>, she would say softly as her chipped nails tangled in his unruly hair, <em>never forget. We are Dalish</em>.<br/>--</p><p>In which Hide is an elf, a Tevinter slave, and Dalish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dirge

**Author's Note:**

> Archive warnings are for future chapters, which may include graphic depictions of violence, attempted rape, and prostitution.
> 
> In short: It sucks to be an elf in Thedas.

His earliest memory is of her singing.  
  
They were foreign words, strange and haunting. His lullabies were the funeral dirges of her people, the last of their kind.  _Da’len_ , she would say softly as her chipped nails tangled in his unruly hair,  _never forget. We are Dalish_.  
  
Every night, she sang of promises.  
  
_We are Dalish. One day, we will return to our Clan._  
  
He learned to sing before he learned to speak, learned forbidden words in the strangled quiet of their dark quarters long after the sun had set. Huddled in the corner, threadbare blanket wrapped tightly around him, his grandmother’s arms a more secure cocoon than any cotton weave could ever hope to be, others gathered too, eager to listen to the hope her songs promised.  
  
–  
  
She says the others are not like them; they are not Dalish.   
  
The pattern of her tattoos are part of his soul, imprinted not with ink, but with blood. Just as he can see them with his eyes closed, she says she can see his. When he is an adult, she will stand proudly as the Keeper carefully brings it to the surface for all others to see; the _vallaslin_ an eternal proof of his heritage.   
  
–  
  
His mother died before he could stand.  
  
He doesn’t know how she died, no one ever speaks of it, not directly. But he hears it in their silence, in the searching look of other children.  
  
The truth comes bubbling to the surface, bursting into his life, a terrifying supernova in the dark.   
  
There is chaos, the pitter patter of panic as children are ushered into cupboards and closets.   
  
His grandmother does not try to hide him, her blunt fingernails digging into his flesh as he stands quietly by her side, small hand clasped so tightly in her weathered one. He will never forget it, the sharp pinpricks of pain, how he squirms in her hold, wanting to flee but too frightened to. The apprehension, the fear.  
  
His grandmother is scared; she is never scared. She is terrified.  
  
The Magister, when he arrives in their quarters, is volcanic in his rage. With his staff swinging, he knocks one slave down, and another.  _Please_ , they beg.  _Master, please. Have mercy._  With laughter, he crushes bone beneath his boot as they wail, free hand clutching their broken arm.   
  
He tells them to stand, and they do, bowed low with fear. Their children are swiftly rooted out and they too join their parents, eyes red and cheeks tear-streaked as they cling to their injured mothers and fathers. Still more slaves join the lineup, one of the gardening boys, the aging scullery maid, the manservant with arthritis.  
  
When they leave with their master, they do not return, and their family’s wailing and his grandmother’s dirges are the only sounds in their quarters for weeks.  
  
_Blood rituals_ , no one says outloud.  _Blood magic._  
  
His grandmother holds him more tightly in her arms when they sleep, an unspoken confirmation. He cries himself to sleep that first night, tears he had never shed for his mother.  
  
“Will I lose you too?” His voice cracks, throat too dry for words when water flows so freely from his eyes.   
  
“No,  _da’len_ ,” she promises. “You will not lose me too.”  
  
It is years later, when he understands her words. He watches her mix tonics for their master, learns to crush fresh herbs and dried berries under her quiet tutelage. His grandmother and her proficiency in Dalish potions are what keeps her safe. Even as the Tevinter mock the Dalish as inferior, it is her mixtures that kept their master’s ailing wife alive, a skill invaluable and irreplaceable.   
  
–  
  
He thinks he falls in love in his eighth spring, when another slave hands him wilting wildflowers and tells him to smile.  
  
She is human, a year older than him, the girl in charge of arranging the flowers in the mansion. The Lady enjoys her arrangements and so the girl is replaced in the kitchens and he begins chopping vegetables and skinning meat for the cook in her place. He hates it; the smell never leaves his hands.  
  
“Smile, Hide,” she says, grin wide and enthralling. “Smile.”  
  
That night, as his grandmother combs his wet hair he he tells her. “I think I like Shizuku.”  
  
“No,” his grandmother says firmly. “She is human.”  
  
But she smiles so kindly at him every morning, his heart strangely light and cottony in his chest.  
  
He doesn’t understand his grandmother’s adamant refusal. “Humans enslaved us. They robbed us. They murder us. Humans are not to be trusted.”  
  
_She too is a slave_ , he wants to say.  _She has lost her father, who was selected as a sacrifice. She’s the same as us._  
  
The fury in her eyes quiets his protests; the wetness at the edges is the reason why they die.  
  
–  
  
The Lady succumbs to her illness and the master’s obsession with his experiments increases. He rarely leaves the basement. The slaves that enter it never return.   
  
One by one, the master’s apprentices disappear. Did they leave? Hide never saw them leave.   
  
_The master is making enemies_ , the slaves whisper.  _We won’t be safe for long._    
  
Their whispers are prophecy and three months after the death of their mistress, they find themselves ordered into the basement.   
  
All of them.  
  
They cower in fear as demons and abominations roam freely, restless. Waiting.  
  
The master’s eyes are wild, the eyes of a desperate creature. “They’re coming,” he says and he grabs a serving girl’s wrist, hand red and slippery with wet blood. “I need to prepare, I need to,” he chants as cold steel slices through pliant flesh. “Not enough,” he says as he grabs a small child and butchers him too, the child’s wail trailing into a gurgle.  
  
“Not enough.”  
  
The door is sealed shut, magic no slave can ever hope to overcome. They are trapped, the dead waiting for death. Sacrifices. Ingredients for their master.  
  
Hide cannot tear his eyes away as crimson fingers paint sigils on the walls, the way the jeweled dagger glitters like a dying red sun in the firelight.   
  
Everyone is crying, huddled together and frightened. They don’t want to die. They are going to die. The master cuts another one open –splays their insides out and makes patterns of them as he consults his parchments. This is their end; they too will die choking on blood, fear, their master’s hands in them, changing them.   
  
Maybe they will be lucky and they will just lay there, broken bodies strewn on the basement floor, only good for rotting. Or maybe they will be the unlucky, maybe they too will transform and change, become engulfed in the flames of rage, consumed by the ice of despair. Fickle guardians for their master, but powerful. Powerful enough to stay the coming storm, the other magisters he has angered in his lust for power.  
  
The power to restore what was lost; to retrieve the dead from the grips of the Maker Himself and return them to the living.   
  
“ _Da’len_ ,” his grandmother whispers, urgency the only thing Hide can hear. “We must act quickly.”  
  
For a moment, he thinks his grandmother has found a way to save them –to destroy the seal on the basement door, to dissolve the protective barrier around their master, a secret passage out of the labyrinthine basement. No one moves, they have already given in to despair, waiting for the inevitable end. But they are not Dalish and grandmother is –she can do things they cannot, can make things they cannot, has seen things they have not. She can save them, he thinks desperately. She just needs his help because he too is Dalish, it is in his blood.   
  
She drags him further and further away from their master, deeper and deeper into the cavernous darkness.   
  
“Hide,” she says kneeling before him, tender fingers brushing away the tears on his cheek. It is the first time she has ever spoken his name. He has always been  _da’len_ , her child. His name has never terrified him so, has never made him feel so lost and alone. “Stay here,” she instructs as she helps him into a crevice, a deep wound in the wall of the basement, half obstructed by low bookshelves and cabinets. “You must be brave,  _da’len_. Do not move. Do not breathe. Do not make a sound. No matter what you see and hear, you must stay here. And when everything is over, you must run.   
  
“Run, Hide. Do not turn back. Run south, far away from Tevinter and its Magisters and its slavery and its blood magic. Find our people, find the Dalish.” She kisses his forehead, lips chapped and familiar. “I am sorry I will not see the day you receive your  _vallaslin_ ,  _da’len_. But it is more important you survive.  
  
“Live, da’len.”  
  
With strength borne of determination, she pushes away the small bookshelves to replace them with another, tall and sturdy, covering his hole, the place where he will hide like a coward as everyone he has ever known dies. As the only family he has ever known walks back to their master, to her death.  
  
He curls forward, head between his knees, hands pressed tightly against his ears, against the screams.  
  
He hears it –the moment his grandmother dies, her pained cries before they taper off, and he knows she died as she had lived –a proud and brave Dalish, unbroken by her Tevinter captors.   
  
When the basement is finally breached and the master’s enemies come flooding through, the screams intensify, the blood curdling screeches of the demons and abominations reverberating in his bones. His grandmother is one of them, he knows. She is one of the monstrosities the intruders are fighting.   
  
_You must be brave, da’len._  
  
Bile rises in his throat –he chokes on it, hands over his mouth, tears streaming down his cheek.   
  
He wants to die –he wants to join grandmother. Wants to see his mother. He wants to join the Creators, or even the Maker. He doesn’t want to be brave, not if it means hiding in the darkness, alone, losing everything he has ever known, everything he loves.  
  
_Do not move. Do not breathe. Do not make a sound._  
  
He can hear his master’s screech of terror and he knows it must be the end. He hears the cries of pain, smells the stench of scorching flesh, and he knows that it is over.  
  
He doesn’t move, he doesn’t breathe. If only the stillness could overcome him, become one with him. A stillness of death.   
  
_Live, da’len_  
  
He doesn’t move when the intruders explore deeper into the basement, chasing the demons and abominations that had fled the main battle when their master fell. He doesn’t breathe when they are on the other side of the bookshelf that hides him, when other bookshelves are toppled over in the struggle. He is still and silent, even when they are close enough he can hear the gurgle of blood caught in their throats as they die.  
  
He falls asleep, curled tightly into himself, and when he wakes, he thinks he has done it.  
  
He has managed to become one with the stillness.  
  
There is nothing but the silence that hangs heavy beyond his bookshelf.  
  
Nothing.  
  
–  
  
It takes effort to push the solid oak bookshelf over and he is left panting at the exertion.   
  
_There is no time_ , he tells himself when he sees the mangled corpses, the burnt ash, the shattered ice. The mansion will not stay empty forever. Someone will come –cleaners to dispose of the bodies, looters to pick the place clean, a new magister, because an empty position in the Magistrate never stays empty for very long.   
  
He tries to remember the whispered plans of escape he had heard. Escaping Tevinter without a plan, without supplies, is folly, they had said. One must be prepared.   
  
Slowly, he picks his way through the sea of corpses, eyes unseeing, unwilling to see what has become of his grandmother. He reaches what remains of his master, collapsed against a table. Dark red fingerprints decorate the wooden surface, evidence of his master’s last attempts to stay upright. Black and charred beyond recognition, his master must have suffered before dying. If not for the sigil ring on the corpse’s hand it would be impossible to identify the body for who it was.  
  
The glint of steel is what attracts him, the ceremonial dagger that his master had used to slaughter them. It is crusted with dried blood, the blood of everyone he has ever known.   
  
He turns away from it, from the husk of his former master, furiously scrubbing at his eyes.   
  
“First, I need coin,” he says, trying to marshal his thoughts into some sense of order. He pauses, fingers tracing the point of his ears. “No, I need a way to disguise myself first, then coin.”  
  
_You’re unlucky_ , he thinks to the looters who will eventually descend upon this place.  _I have first choice._


End file.
